Ex-paratrooper, disabled vet, ex-firearms instructor, former Ron Paul staffer, Yale Law grad/Research Scholar, Montana lawyer and president and founder of Oath Keepers.
Stewart has written for Gerry Spence's The Warrior, the Enemy at the Gate column for S.W.A.T. Magazine, and is writing a book on the dangers of applying the laws of war to the American people in the "war on terror".
This is Stewart's personal blog and does not necessarily represent the official stance of Oath Keepers.

Sunday, October 29, 2006

Reinstate the Draft!: America's youth must serve their country, one way or another - Sieg Heil!

iNote: This
article was first published on September 09, 2006 here at www.moreliberty.org as a response to
Edward Bernard Glick's article calling for a draft for domestic
'civilian" service, as well as for military duty. Keep your eye on this
totalitarian idea of "national service" - it is not going away
anytime soon.

This is where the Far Right truly raps around to meet the Far Left in total
agreement that you and your children are merely resources to be exploited by
the State. Several prominent Democrats have called for a draft as a tool of
"equality" (apparently, equal slavery is fine, so long as it is truly
equal, and color-blind) and of course, most right wingers reflexively support a
draft as being the epitome of patriotism.
Stewart Rhodes

Reinstate the draft! So says Edward Bernard Glick in his commentary published by
the Christian Science Monitor on September 5th: A draft would do more than just harness the energy
and idealism of the nation's youth to meet the military's unmet personnel
needs. It would also tap more of the resources of the nation's women, heeding
their demands for more gender equality by making their obligations more
consonant with their rights....

• All able-bodied and able-minded
18-year-old men and women should have their names placed in a lottery. Depending
on how many soldiers are needed - typically just a few thousand each year - a
modest percentage would be drafted.

• Then, the names of all those who
didn't get drafted should be placed into a lottery for nonmilitary service in
city or suburban slums, rural areas, native Americans reservations, or other
poverty-stricken places.

Mr. Glick, where are we? Ancient Sparta? The USSR? Nazi Germany or the ant hills
of Maoist China? What is happening to this nation? Where has the land of the
free gone?

Where in our Constitution was Congress, or any
part of the national government, given the power to use our children as literal
national resources, for military or domestic "service?" The answer is
no where.

The closest thing to a draft power in the
Constitution is the power “To provide for calling forth the militia to execute
the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions” but even
that is not a power to forcefully induct people into a standing army. The
militia were state military forces, made up of the people of each state, under
officers of their own choosing, and they would fight as such, and here at home,
not abroad, for the limited purpose of enforcing the laws of the union (which
were very few) suppressing rebellions and repelling invasions.

The Founders had a well-justified fear of standing
armies, and the thought of such involuntary servitude into a national army
never crossed their minds. No, not even the US Supreme Court has had the
audacity to claim that the militia clause granted such power. The high priests
on the Court knew that such would be an incredible claim, easily refuted.
Instead, the Court has relied on the nebulous power of Congress to raise and
support an army (while sidestepping the Thirteenth Amendment’s overt
prohibition of involuntary servitude).

In Arver v. U.S., 245 U.S. 366 (1918), the Court
upheld the draft during World War I by relying on the Article 1, Section 8
powers of Congress “to raise and support armies,” and then stated that:

And of course the powers conferred by these
provisions like all other powers given carry with them as provided by the Constitution
the authority 'to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for
carrying into execution the foregoing powers.' Article 1, 8."Ah, Alexander Hamiliton’s favorite catch all
statist loophole strikes again!

The Court then dismissed any objection to this
“reasoning” thusly:As the mind cannot conceive an army without the
men to compose it, on the face of the Constitution the objection that it does
not give power to provide for such men would seem to be too frivolous for
further notice.As for the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibitions on
slavery and involuntary servitude, the Court said:Finally, as we are unable to conceive upon what
theory the exaction by government from the citizen of the performance of his
supreme and noble duty of contributing to the defense of the rights and honor
of the nation as the result of a war declared by the great representative body
of the people can be said to be the imposition of involuntary servitude in
violation of the prohibitions of the Thirteenth Amendment, we are constrained
to the conclusion that the contention to that effect is refuted by its mere
statement.But the power to raise and support armies was
originally only the power to spend money to raise and support an army, to pay
people to serve in a standing army if they so chose, just as in the American
Revolution, and the people could choose to not serve, walking away, just like
in the American Revolution. Why was it that Thomas Paine had to write
"These are the times that try men's souls" in "The
Crisis"?

Because he had to convince the men in the
Continental Army to renew their enlistment contracts. He, and General
Washington, who had the first installment of The Crisis read aloud to the troops,
had to persuade them, with appeals to their love of liberty, and of country, to
stay of their own volition to fight. To their credit, and earning our
everlasting gratitude, the vast majority of them were so moved by Paine's words
that they stayed and fought, and many of them bled and died for liberty. But
what have we done with the liberty they sacrificed so much to win for us?

One of the causes of our rebellion against the
Crown had been impressment of Americans into the Royal Navy. And that same practice
was later one of the grievances that led to the war of 1812. If Washington had
been of such low character, such ignorance of what he was fighting for (he was
not) and had even dared to attempt such impressment, such enslavement of the
American people into national service during their revolution for liberty, he
would have been tarred and feathered and run out on a rail, just like all of
the other usurpers of the day.

But now the principles of liberty that sparked and
sustained the American Revolution have been turned on their heads in truly
Orwellian fashion. Now patriotism is defined not as the willingness to
voluntarily fight and die for liberty, but its exact opposite: the support of
institutionalized slavery of forced impressment into standing armies to fight
abroad whether you agree with the justness of the cause or not, and now,
according to this man, also collective forced labor schemes at home.

Just how is it that domestic national service can
even be argued to be under the claimed power to draft an army under the Article
1 power to raise an army? This is what happens with all such unfounded claims
of power – they expand to encompass more and more until the government is
totally free to act in any and all ways upon us it wishes to and we are totally
subject to that unlimited power. No doubt the well connected will be able to
ensure that the better looking eighteen year old domestic “servants” have to
“serve” directly under them, just as Chairman Mao had a steady stream of young
girls “serving” China directly under him whenever he needed a break from
running the forced labor farms that killed millions.

In the face of such claims that our government may
do with us as it pleases in the national intest, as if we were cattle, we would
do well to recall just what it was that Thomas Paine said in "The
Crisis":THESE are the times that try men's souls. The
summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the
service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and
thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we
have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious
the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness
only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price
upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as
FREEDOM should not be highly rated. Britain, with an army to enforce her
tyranny, has declared that she has a right (not only to TAX) but "to BIND
us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER" and if being bound in that manner, is not
slavery, then is there not such a thing as slavery upon earth. Even the
expression is impious; for so unlimited a power can belong only to God
(emphasis in original).We now have over us a government, with its little
minions and cheerleaders of both major parties, that, much like Britain at the
time of the Revolution, thinks it can BIND us in ALL CASES WHATSOEVER (and for
ALL PURPOSES WHATSOEVER). I agree with Paine that if being bound in this manner
is not slavery, then there is not such a thing as slavery upon earth, and such
unlimited power can belong only to God. And our government is not God.

Nor is it our master. We are not, yet, slaves. And
if we are to remain free, we need to resolve ourselves to be as resolute as our
forefathers in resisting this new creeping tyranny, which like hell, is not
easily conquered. We have an advantage over the peasants of Russia, China, and
Cambodia. While they had no example of liberty to follow, we do. Let us do as
the Founding generation did when their own government claimed unlimited power
over their lives, liberty, and property.

Ah, I think you may be confusing the short quote from Mr. Glick's piece with my rebuttal (which is likely what you find prolix).

Go here, and read his article, and then see if you still agree with him:

http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0905/p09s02-coop.html

If after reading that, and revisiting my response, you still agree with him, all I have to say is - of course you do! Such is the sad state of this nation. Never have such a free people so wanted slavery.